Joshua Green wrote it for The Atlantic. Not sure I’d consider him a serious political journalist. This isn’t in the league ofDavidBroderorGeorgeWill. Green’s article read like it came from a gang of 8th-grade bullies in the lunchroom giggling and snickering while thumbing through a yearbook.

Green wrote:

“A quick office straw poll here at The Atlantic, conducted amidst uproarious laughter, confirms that this is, in fact, the single worst year book photo that most of us have ever seen. An outright disaster. I suppose it’s Santorum’s misfortune to have been in high school during this era. I’m pretty sure that 1976 wasn’t too kind to anyone. But still. Wow—he looks like McLovin in polyester. I have yet to meet the political consultant talented enough to spin this one. My condolences to Santorum. Brave of him to have struggled through this and made something of this life.”

At some point an editor atAtlanticshould have said, “Um, Green, can’t find a legitimate argument against a candidate?”

Russell P. Petcoff, 1981, Lake Central High School, St. John, Ind.

Green dug deep and included senior photos for Fred Karger and Gary Johnson…who? He included them but no senior photos of Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton? Heck, I would have given Green some credit if he included his senior year photo and mocked himself. He didn’t.

Is the political process so poisoned that none of the candidates—particularly conservative politicians—have a positive quality for journalists to write about? Look hard, there must be some. I refuse to believe a legitimate candidate for president does not have a handful of positive qualities.

My reaction isn’t because Green mocked my candidate. I’m not a supporter of no one right now. I need legitimate information to form an opinion. All Americans need better political journalism to help them form a legitimate impression of the candidates.

What Americans don’t need is sophomoric snickering of a 36-year-old senior class photo.

Frenzied shoppers crowd the malls…if they can even get there. They meander aimlessly through the parking lot trying to find a space. What seems hours later, they find one. That’s the good news. What’s the bad news? It’s so far from the mall the trek would wind the fittest triathlete.

These frustrated shoppers visit “brick-and-mortar” and on-line stores seeking the perfect gift for their “hard-to-buy-for” and slightly eccentric Uncle Wilbur. Everything is out of stock. They end up grabbing anything – usually a Chia pet or a holiday sweater with the Christmas tree-and-snowflake pattern, whichever comes first.

They bemoan about having to attend office holiday parties. They can’t stand the thought of eating more Ritz crackers smeared with a wine-flavored spread from an almond-encrusted cheese ball or another Christmas cookie.

Don’t get them started with the “lameness” of the office gift exchange. After all, they swear they brought the only legitimate gift. They complain about how their co-workers must have dived deep into their re-gifting pile for their contribution.

Compared to them, it’s easy to think the uptight Grinch is as carefree as the effervescent Tigger.

To this, I have two words:

Stop it. (thank you Bob Newhart for this gem!)

And I’d like to add three others:

Enjoy the season.

I speak from experience. I’ve always hated fighting the crowds at the malls during the holiday season. I can’t remember the number of “white elephant” gift exchanges I attended where I was stuck with a gift the anonymous giver must have purchased at the local drugstore while late for work. (Though, there was the one time I got a really cool gift at an Air Force special operations group holiday party!)

I’m ashamed of my shallowness and self-centeredness. The Christmas season is for enjoying…so enjoy it. There are billions of people in the world not as fortunate as any American. There are millions of Americans — maybe even some close friends — who are unemployed and facing a not-so-merry Christmas.

They have no holiday party to attend.

They have no gift exchanges to participate in.

They have no gifts to give.

The only gift they will be receiving is God’s love for them. Sadly, for some it’s a love they either aren’t aware of or don’t acknowledge because of their unbelief.

This isn’t meant to be a guilt trip. It’s a reminder to enjoy all your blessings this Christmas season.

I will.

Merry Christmas.

I shot this photo while walking my golden retriever Brinkley. The fading colors struck me. I used my iPhone to take the picture and Snapseed to process it.

Sent from my iPad

This picture is #9 in my 100 Strangers project. This is Paul LaPorte. I met him at the Duane Reade Pharmacy at 57th Street and 7th Avenue in New York City. He asked what type of camera I had. Told him it’s a Nikon D80. LaPorte said he had one too. He bought his first camera in 1951 while stationed in Panama. His fellow soldiers said he should buy a camera before they shipped home. They told him to get a Leica. In the U.S., they sold for $444. In Panama they went for about $200. He didn’t have the money, being $25 short. The store owner offered two little-known cameras. One was a Nikon and the other a Canon. He didn’t know which would be better, so he chose the Nikon. His fellow soldiers mocked LaPorte for buying a Japanese camera. They told him everyone knew Japanese-made products were junk. He figured he could sell it back in the U.S. and make money. He’s owned several Nikons since. Learn more about the project at www.100strangers.com or www.flicker.com/groups/100strangers.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written. Haven’t felt like I had much to say. I was surprised with the burst of writing around the April timeframe. Then, it tapered off to nothing.

Seems like effective writing needs something compelling to write about. I haven’t had anything.

Until now.

I’m facing layoff at the end of the month. The government agency my company had a contract with chose to exercise the option year but not fund the team I was a part of. I have until the end of the month to find a job, either within or outside the company.

Nothing like an impending deadline to quicken one’s pulse. I fill my days with web searches for jobs, creating profiles on companies’ career sites, attending job fairs and tweaking my resume.

My days remind me of Bill Murray’s weather forecaster in “Groundhog Day.” Every day is the same. Except, I have a golden retriever named Brinkley instead of a groundhog, and Sonny and Cher don’t serenade me in the morning — things are looking up!

Trying to keep a positive attitude. Surely, there must be something in Washington, D.C., for an experienced Air Force public affairs retiree. A voice inside my head there must be, and quite calling me Shirley.

My faith is comforting right now. I’m relying on the story of Joseph. Details are in Genesis. The short of it is his brother’s sold him off to slavery. He ended up in Egypt. He was working in a good home when he was wrongly accused of sexual assault and imprisoned. Why was God doing this to him, Joseph must have thought. He never lost faith, however. He later became second in charge in Egypt and had people coming to him, bowing and begging for food. Even his brothers, as two dreams of his foretold several years before.

I’m also relying on God’s promises:

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5, ESV)

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. (Jeremiah 29:11-14, English Standard Version)

My faith and trust is with the LORD. The road may be rough, but He won’t forget me. And no, this doesn’t have anything to do with the so-called “Prosperity Gospel.” I don’t believe in that. I do believe God will take care of me. God doesn’t break promises; it’s mankind who breaks its promises to Him.

I don’t plan on it.

However, it’s hard for me to rejoice in the death of this perpetrator of 9/11. Television coverage showed jubilant Americans celebrating outside the White House and in Times Square  It doesn’t seem right watching people celebrate his death as if America had won the Final Four…

…or the Super Bowl…

…or the World Series…

…or even the World Cup.

Were they celebrating a victory or releasing pent up hatred for a man who is responsible for the deaths of more than 3,000 Americans almost a decade ago?

Am I glad bin Laden is gone? Absolutely!

Still, it doesn’t seem right to rejoice over a person’s death. There’s no opportunity to learn why he chose to become hateful or a chance for redemption. Who can say with certainty when someone’s life changes?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a strong proponent of non-violence. He gave a sermon in 1957 titled “Loving Your Enemies.” In it, the reverend has a few pointed things to say about hate and hat it does to people.

“I think the first reason that we should love our enemies, and I think this was at the very center of Jesus’ thinking, is this: that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends. Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that’s the strong person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil. And that is the tragedy of hate, that it doesn’t cut it off. It only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. Somebody must have religion enough and morality enough to cut it off and inject within the very structure of the universe that strong and powerful element of love.

“There’s another reason why you should love your enemies, and that is because hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individual hated or the individuals hated or the groups hated. But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates. You just begin hating somebody, and you will begin to do irrational things. You can’t see straight when you hate. You can’t walk straight when you hate. You can’t stand upright. Your vision is distorted. There is nothing more tragic than to see an individual whose heart is filled with hate. He comes to the point that he becomes a pathological case. For the person who hates, you can stand up and see a person and that person can be beautiful, and you will call them ugly. For the person who hates, the beautiful becomes ugly and the ugly becomes beautiful. For the person who hates, the good becomes bad and the bad becomes good. For the person who hates, the true becomes false and the false becomes true. That’s what hate does. You can’t see right. The symbol of objectivity is lost. Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater.”

Yes, bin Laden was hateful. Isn’t it also hateful to rejoice over someone’s death? After all, one is rejoicing because of hatred for the deceased. Shouldn’t we mourn the loss of the deceased’s God-given innocence?

I believe all life starts out innocent and with promise. Who can look at any newborn and see a bin Laden, or an Adolph Hitler or a Pol Pot? A person’s life experiences changes his or her innocence. Hatred comes into the heart and transforms it to hate. If I celebrate a death, am I allowing hatred to come into my heart and transform me? Yes, I believe so.

Hatred is the root cause for all the world’s ills. Some say it’s religion. I disagree. It’s hatred. If religion causes harm, it’s because hatred is the root cause. Hatred changes everything it encounters. Hatred fuels the tension between Christians and Muslims, and between the West and the Islamic world. I’m not saying everyChristian, Westerner or Muslim has hatred for the other but enough do to cause the tension.

Hatred is the cause of anti-Semitism. It was the cause of The Troubles in Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestants. It was the cause of the genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia…ad infinitum. When does it end? Who will be the stronger person to end it?

America is strong enough. We can stop the cycle of hatred and take a step toward changing the world when we say enough is enough. If we don’t the cycle violence will continue. Our enemies will celebrate our deaths, and we will celebrate theirs…and so on…and so on. …

The weather was cooperating for the hour-long drive. For us, yesterday was the third day of nice weather. The sun was shining and the air was pleasant. It felt like spring was finally here. A week ago the weather was chilly when we left BWI, and it rained for much of the time in Paducah.

Before we could head home, we needed to exit the long-term parking lot.

The light was green above the attendant’s booth. I pulled up and handed the attendant our ticket. I tend to be an introvert and have to push myself to talk with people. I try to practice whenever I can.

“It’s a pretty day to watch the world go by,” I said to the booth attendant. Her name tag read Ernestine.

“Everyday is a pretty day when you wake up,” Ernestine said. “You know, 26 years ago I had ovarian cancer — stage 3 — and Jesus Christ healed me. Everyday is a pretty day.”

Amen…can’t argue with Ernestine’s outlook.

Makes me reflect on how fortunate and blessed I am. What about you?

Finkel's Fair Store

Paducah is an old river town with character stemming from its buildings and people.

This western Kentucky city sits on the Ohio River. Much of its downtown dates to the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Old paint advertisements — some long faded – add to the city’s unique appeal. It’s not uncommon to see old Mail Pouch Tobacco signs, but they generally are on barns. Not so in Paducah. One of those ubiquitous signs

Mail Pouch Tobacco sign

adorns a building at 129 S. Water St. The sign is faded; that adds to picture.

From the same vantage point as the Mail Pouch photo is the red sign for Finkel’s Fair Stores. The clothing and shoe store used to occupy this store until 1989. As the sign advertises, Finkel’s had a couple of stores in surrounding small towns. The stores are gone, but the sign proudly and brightly isn’t. I remember as a boy going with my great grandfather Papa and grandmother Mom to get a pair of Wrangler jeans.

Not far from Finkel’s is the downtown band gazebo. On this day, Captain Freddy and the Rivercats played

Captain Freddy

Dixieland jazz. Captain Freddy sang and strummed his banjo to an accompaniment of bass, trombone and trumpet filled the bright sunny day…a welcome change to the endless days of rain and threats of flooding.

It felt good to have a sunny day and the opportunity to seek out photos. Seeing unique pictures of shapes and texture is my challenge. At one location, I stayed outside while Lisa went into a downtown quilting store. I passed the time looking for an interesting shot. Above my head was this single insulator surrounded by the textures of the bricks, rusted iron and concrete. I love this kind of photo.

Insulator and texture

I imagine the women sitting outside the store thought I was nuts for taking pictures of the side of a building (“Mabel, that boy ain’t right. What’s he taking a picture of?”).

That’s OK, I take photographs for the same reason I write…for myself.

(Click here for more photos of Paducah and Captain Freddy and the Rivercats.)

This week I read a post from the Atlantic called Working Best at Coffee Shops that got me thinking about writing in coffee shops. I have yet to master the art of writing in coffee shops. It sounds glamourous – I know so many excellent writers did it, or do it (Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Malcom Gladwell to name a … Read More

via Occupation: Writer